If Only etc. eBook

“Yes he does.” Saidie turned round
and faced her sister. “He don’t like
you to enjoy yourself, not a little bit. He would
keep you wrapped up in cotton wool if he could, and
if you don’t make a stand now, once and for
all, and let him see you have a mind of your own and
intend to do as you like, you’ll regret it to
the last day of your life. Who is he, anyway?
I guess our family’s as good, if we knew anything
about them, which we don’t, worse luck.
Just you give him back his own sauce, Bella, and next
time he finds fault with you, laugh in his face and
tell him he has got to put up with what he finds,
for it ain’t likely you can alter your nature
to suit his high mightiness. Pitch on a thing
or two he does which you don’t like, and give
him a sermon as long as your arm. You see; he
will come off his pedestal. Sakes alive! he ought
to have me to deal with; I bet I’d teach him
a thing or two.”

And then Saidie whipped herself off to the “Rivolette,”
where she sang a doubtful song and displayed her finely
turned limbs in a style that would have disgusted
her brother-in-law, if he had been there to see.

But music halls were not to his liking under any circumstances.
He had never really cared for them, even in his bachelor
days, and now he would have cut his right hand off
rather than be seen with his young wife beside him,
at such resorts.

Then, too, Dr. Chetwynd felt that it behoved him to
be circumspect in all his actions, for his practice
was steadily increasing and he was becoming popular,
and had serious thoughts of migrating westward.
It was a constant source of vexation to him that Bella
was not liked as much as her handsome, clever husband,
and he began to be painfully alive to the fact that
she could not have been received in certain houses
whose doors would have been gradually opened to him.
In a social sense his wife was a failure, and with
a sigh he realised that it was almost an impossibility
to show her where the fault lay; he could not always
be at her elbow to guard against little solecisms of
manner and speech which he knew must jar and grate
on others even more than on himself.

It went terribly against the grain, for he loved her
none the less that his eyes were not blinded to her
shortcomings. She was still the same winsome
girl he had made his own; large-hearted, gentle and
affectionate, but—­and he sighed impatiently,
for that something lacking was for ever pulling him
back and standing in the way of his own social advancement.

He became less demonstrative, less congenial, and
his practice made huge demands upon his time, and
left but scant opportunity for pleasure-seeking.
Lines traced themselves upon his brow and lurked at
the corners of his mouth; he aged rapidly, and began
to look like an elderly man while Bella was still
little more than a girl.

On the night of Mrs. Chetwynd’s return from
the maternal roof (for Mrs. Blackall still lived near
the Waterloo Road, and her elder daughter continued
to make her home with her), she found her husband,
a good deal to her surprise, seated in the drawing-room,
gay with flowers and crowded with knick-nacks of every
description. He had in his hand a book which
he flung down with an annoyed gesture as his wife
opened the door.